Wednesday, December 10, 2008

The Pharaoh's Troops, Acting as Subcontractors to the IOF, Are Keeping the Rafah Crossing Tightly Closed to Make Sure That More Palestinian Children Starve. Way to Go Pharaoh, You and the Rest of The Silent And Collaborating War Criminal Arab Regimes; TFU!

Eva Bartlett writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 9 December 2008

(Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who spent eight months in 2007 living in West Bank communities and four months in Cairo and at the Rafah crossing. She is currently based in Gaza, after the third successful voyage of the Free Gaza Movement to break the siege on Gaza)

"......."On Saturday, the World Bank stated that "The ongoing closure of Gaza and severe restrictions on the flow of goods and people continues to be a cause of grave concern." Two weeks earlier, John Ging, Director of Operations in Gaza for the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, called the situation in Gaza "very desperate at the humanitarian level." He added that "people have been stripped of their dignity here, it is a struggle to survive for everybody," noting that half of Gaza's 1.5 million citizens are children.

UNRWA, along with other relief agencies in Gaza, provides food aid to 80 percent of the Gaza population. Even UN supplies were depleted in mid-November as a result of the closed borders, which Israel has sealed since 4 November allowing only brief openings to provide minimal amounts of food aid and fuel insufficient for Gaza's depleted stocks. Ging noted that "It was unprecedented that we ran out of food, which we did over 10 days ago. The closures are becoming more and more restrictive, the situation here is getting worse and worse."

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced on Sunday that Gaza's crossings would remain closed. UNRWA officials also announced that food aid supplies will last only for two or three more days if the borders remain closed. Emphasizing that Israel is merely drip-feeding Gaza, a UN official stated that "the 16 truckloads Israel allowed into the Gaza Strip last Thursday were not enough in light of the brewing humanitarian crisis."........"